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Tyler Morrison avatar image
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Tyler Morrison asked Jason Lightfoot commented

Send one operator to pick up a batch of items?

Hi,

I need to transport items from queues 1, 2, and 3 to queues 4, 5, and 6 respectively using 6 operators and a dispatcher. The batch needs to be moved by one operator in one trip and any of the 6 operators can move any of the batches. The queues are batching the items and the operators are trying to load a full batch, but one operator is getting called per item not one per batch, so the operators don't carry a full batch because multiple operators go to pick up the batch at the same time. How do I send one operator to pick up a batch instead of sending one operator to pick up each item? Eventually I will have lots of these paired queues so I would like to use tasksequences so I can copy the queues when I need more without changing much. I have attached a model of what I have.

Thank you in advance.

FlexSim 18.1.1
processflowoperatorsbatch processingdispatcherstask sequences
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Tyler Morrison avatar image Tyler Morrison commented ·

send-one-operator-per-batch-instead-of-one-operato.fsm Here is the model, I forgot to attach it the first time.

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Tyler Morrison avatar image Tyler Morrison commented ·

@Joshua S

This process flow works in the model already posted which was a model I built to test the logic for a project I'm working on. I copied it to the model for my project and now I get an error that a label doesn't exist on a token id. I copied the process flow and queue over exactly, but now I will need to be going to a mix of sinks and queues as my destinations. I have attached screen shots of the error messages I'm getting when I try to run my model. Can you tell me what these errors mean and what the cause might be? I can't post this model as it's confidential.

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Joshua S avatar image Joshua S Tyler Morrison commented ·

As it fails, can you exit out of the error message, then click on the token in the travel activity and take a screen shot of the side panel to show the labels for the tokens, like this?

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Tyler Morrison avatar image Tyler Morrison Joshua S commented ·

Here are the screen shots.

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1 Answer

Joshua S avatar image
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Joshua S answered Jason Lightfoot commented

I used process flow to do what you are suggesting. Here's your model with process flow incorporated. for every queue you add, increment its label "Queue" to match the number of pickup queues, and increment the quantity of tokens created in the "EntrySource" to match the number of pickup queues.11989-send-one-operator-per-batch-changed.fsm

There is still an issue with the visuals that I am looking into where the objects hover several feet above the operator. Let me know if the model design is what you are looking for and I'll look into fixing this hovering issue. Hope this helps.


11989-send-one-operator-per-batch-changed.fsm (61.0 KiB)
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Tyler Morrison avatar image Tyler Morrison commented ·

send-one-operator-per-batch-instead-of-one-operato.fsm

Joshua,

That is not exactly what I need. My apologies but the model I originally posted was not showing my issue, I must have posted the wrong version. Here is the correct version that shows the issue I'm having . When queues 1, 2, or 3 release a batch of items to be transported, multiple operators go to load the batch and some operators don't end up loading a full batch of items before unloading what they have loaded. For my model, I need one operator to be go load a full batch from queues 1, 2, or 3 and then unload the full batch to the connected queue (4, 5, or 6 depending which queue the items are loaded from) every time a batch of items is released from queues 1, 2, or 3.

Thank you,

Tyler

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send-one-operator-per-batch-instead-of-one-operato.fsm (46.0 KiB)
Joshua S avatar image Joshua S commented ·
@Tyler Morrison

my apologies, I uploaded a completely unrelated file. I edited my post with the correct file, here is the correct file 11989-send-one-operator-per-batch-changed.fsm

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Adrian M avatar image Adrian M Joshua S commented ·

What's the point of this? Why are we only creating 3 when the batch size requested is 5?

1698792651954.png

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Jason Lightfoot avatar image Jason Lightfoot ♦♦ Adrian M commented ·
One token for each queue. The pull quantity is 5 and the the list is partitioned by the queueID.
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Tyler Morrison avatar image Tyler Morrison commented ·

That works exactly how I need it to and will be simple enough to copy to a larger scale. Thanks!

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Tyler Morrison avatar image Tyler Morrison commented ·

@Joshua S

As I was looking into it farther I noticed that all the batches have to be the same size (5) right now. How can I make it so that an operator carries different quantities of items depending which queue it comes from. I tried making the pull from list request and require numbers to quantities by case and could not get it to work. It would be nice if the quantity of items that are batched and carried by the operators were controlled by the lot size column in the global table "production schedule."

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Joshua S avatar image Joshua S Tyler Morrison commented ·

To do this there are 3 areas you need to edit. Go to your process flow and make changes to your "source activity" by adding another label

Then edit the "Pull from List activity"

The last thing you need to do is unselect batching from all of your queues or it will still wait till there are 5 items before it will let any operators pull from them. Hope this works for you.

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